1. A few days after this, Dora and Harry were going across the fields. They saw a horse and cart standing, and a man taking white stones out of the cart and putting them over the ground.

2. 'Why, it is Joe!' they cried, as they came nearer. 'Good-morning, Joe. What are you doing?'

'Chalking this bit of land, you see. You know what chalk is, do you?'

3. Harry and Dora picked up a piece or two.

'Teacher writes on the blackboard with chalk,' they said.

'Yes, you are right. It is used for many things,' and he went on spreading it over the field.

4. 'But what is it wanted here for, Joe?'

'No chalk, no wheat!' said Joe.

'Father put no chalk on our field, and we had such a heap of wheat!'

5. 'Yours is good land. This up here has never been used for farming. It had little old trees on it, you know, and they were cut down and their roots dug out of the ground; and now, look at it! It is poor soil.'

6. 'How do you know it is poor?'

'Look at the field below, what a nice brown it is! That will grow anything, but this is all colours—black, red, yellow, and green.

7. 'I have been a long way to fetch this chalk: I started off with old Dobbin this morning before it was light, and got it out of the chalk-pit.'

8. 'When we were fast asleep!' said Dora.

'Then you don't buy chalk at a shop?' said Harry.

Joe laughed.

'No; it comes out of the ground.'

'This is like the slate story,' said Dora.

Harry nodded.

9. 'But, Joe, I want to know how the chalk makes the ground good.'

'I don't know how, but it does. If it lies here for a year or more, the earth will turn brown, and we can grow wheat in it. Besides, chalk holds water, and so it will keep the ground moist up here.'

10. 'How?'

'Well, when it rains, the water will not run away through the earth, but will stay in the lumps of chalk. Are you going? Good-bye, then.'